The Perfect Man
by Lectora de Libros
Summary: Even though Hermione had never been like the other girls of her age, her fantasy about the perfect man when she was little was not very different from the fantasy of any other girl.


**English is not my first language, so if there's any mistake then… Oops?**

**Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.**

…

Even though Hermione had never been like the other girls of her age, her fantasy about the perfect man when she was little was not very different from the fantasy of any other girl. She imagined a charming prince, someone incredibly handsome and gentlemanly who would live to make her happy. Many times she even dreamed that this prince would give her his own library in his castle as in Beauty and the Beast.

As she grew, her idea of the perfect man was also changing. She began to imagine a simpler, though still quite unrealistic, figure of a learned academic man, educated and with a sincere interest to know her, and that idea stayed with her when she finally went to Hogwarts.

She soon realized that this wouldn't happen with any boy close to her, probably no one in Gryffindor, however, she was too absorbed in the new magical world she was entering and in school to even think about her old silly fantasy.

Not that she was immune to the idea of romance; she did have a crush on Professor Lockhart after all. Who could blame her? The teacher pretended to be the perfect combination of her fantasies for a perfect man. Handsome, gentlemanly and academic who was also a brave hero and excellent wizard with his own books _written by himself_. Of course he caught her attention. However, Hermione was not an idiot, she knew long before she knew that he was a fraud that nothing was going to happen, he was much older than her and he was also her teacher, so she never considered realist the possibility of falling in love with him.

Therefore, Hermione spent her early years at Hogwarts with the idea of the man of her dreams buried in the depths of her mind, much more concerned about her grades and her constant adventures with her friends.

But of course, to Hermione's terror and annoyance, that didn't last forever.

Everything started almost without her realizing it. After she recovered from the Basilisk's attack at the end of her second year, she immediately went to find Harry and Ron. At first, Hermione had to admit that she was much more focused on Harry, since he had been the one who had fought with the Basilisk according to what the nurse had told her, however, when she finally saw them at the bottom of the Great Hall and ran to them shouting "You did it, you did it!", all she could see was Ron.

Harry was clearly relieved to see her, but even in the distance she could see Ron's huge, bright smile. He looked at her as if he hadn't seen her in years, and seeing her again was the best gift he could ever ask for. She knew that Ron cared about her, but she would've never expected anyone to look at her that way, much less Ron.

She kept running towards them more for the automatic movement of her body than for true consciousness, but when she finally reached them, she absently embraced Harry who, although holding her clumsily, did so with obvious love and an honest smile and then Ron pulled her to another hug. Ron's arms held her very briefly, but with strength and gratitude before turning away, still smiling at her. Hermione was alarmed and confused about the tug of her heart and how she felt she was losing her balance, however, she didn't think too much about it, she simply assumed that it was because she had just woken up after weeks of being petrified and she was having secondary effects.

Her real fall was in her third year and the worst this was that she felt it almost immediately, when they met before going to see Harry where he was staying. He looked taller, had longer hair and, again, he was smiling at her. They didn't hug each other when they met, but the simple fact of walking beside him made Hermione's heart beat wildly. She couldn't understand what in the world was going on with her, she hadn't felt like that at any time during the summer, why now had to be any different?

Ron treated her as always and, fortunately, seemed completely oblivious to the internal panic attack that Hermione was suffering, so they spent the day without much trouble, things calmed down again when she got used to seeing him every day again and she forced herself not to read too much into it, probably she had just missed him more than she thought. Out of brief moments in which he smiled at her, he leaned in close to whisper a joke about Malfoy or Snape when they were close or when he defended her from Snape's cruel comments, Hermione kept calm around him, he was still just her friend Ron, it was only her stupid hormones reacting to a good boy close to her, it could have been anyone.

But then Crookshanks had apparently eaten Scabbers and everything went down. Ron was angry and hurt, Hermione was insulted and frustrated, and since neither of them seemed willing to talk about the problem, they simply stopped talking.

Hermione wanted to kick herself and her stupid pride. The evidence was against her and she knew it, if it had been anyone else's cat she would have assumed the same as Ron, but she couldn't force herself to admit it, her constant urge to be right was bigger than her. Guilt and loneliness ate her alive, so she decided to focus on her massive amount of homework thanks to the excess of subjects she had chosen to have, unfortunately, that only took her further to the edge of madness until she finally exploded.

That was the moment in which Hermione knew she was lost, Ron, her friend with whom she hadn't even tried to apologize for something that had really hurt him and that had made it very clear that he was angry with her, dropped their fight immediately and offered to help her. That was Ron, he was grumpy, occasionally rude, lazy and insecure, but also fiercely loyal, protective, kind and unconditional.

She couldn't help it, she threw herself at him to wrap him in a tight hug. She could feel Ron's whole body tense uncomfortably as he tried to soothe her crying by stuttering words of comfort and patting her on the back, but she didn't even noticed his lack of smoothness, even between her tearful word, she was absorbed in everything that Ron wasn't able to control, such as how much she had missed him, his scent and his accelerated heartbeat that Hermione could hear clearly while she hugged him. As clumsy it was, for her it had been perfect.

From that moment on, there was no turning back, she endlessly enjoyed how positively impressed Ron was when he punched Malfoy and she completely lost her breath when he, with a broken leg and pale face of pain, yelled at an apparent killer that he had to kill them too if he wanted to kill Harry. Honestly, if she hadn't liked Ron before, after that, how was she not supposed to like him?

Of course, Ron wasn't even close to being perfect at all, there were many occasions in the following years in which she honestly wondered how she had fallen in love with that idiot, but it was enough a small act of generosity from him to anyone or the smallest of his sincere smiles to forget all the reasons why she was not supposed to have feelings for him.

Hermione reflected on all that during a rainy afternoon in the Gryffindor common room, while she and her friends tried to concentrate on doing their potions homework. It had been less than a week since Ron and Lavender had broken up, until recently, Hermione wouldn't have been able to even speak to Ron, however, after the scare of Ron's poisoning, she could only think of how grateful she was that he was fine. That was one of the rare moments when Ron was completely focused on his homework, which, ironically, caused Hermione not to be able to concentrate on hers, because she loved seeing him when he was so focused on something.

Ron was sitting with the fireplace behind him while he was rereading his homework. The warm fire from the fireplace made his red hair seem to shine and illuminated the frown he always did when he was concentrated, sometimes he bit his lip when he found something on his paper that he didn't like and immediately scratched it.

Hermione didn't notice when she started to smile, but when she finally noticed it, she didn't even try to suppress it. Maybe Ron wasn't remotely similar to what she thought would be the love of her life, but he was an excellent and loyal friend, he was quite sweet without even realizing it, he protected her from anyone who messed with her and, probably most importantly, he made her laugh more than anyone else in the world. When she was with him, she automatically felt lighter, freer.

Lost in her thoughts, Hermione didn't react quickly enough to turn away when Ron finally felt that she was watching him and looked up from his homework to meet Hermione's eyes. His beautiful blue eyes and the soft smile he gave her shone with the uniform illumination of the flames that caused a perfect combination of light and shadow on his face as he smiled at her. Hermione's heart began to beat like crazy and she couldn't help but smile back. The two of them were content to simply look at each other for a while with discreet smiles before they looked away shyly when the moment began to feel very intense.

Hermione pretended to concentrate on her own homework for a few minutes before looking back at Ron discreetly, filling herself with an absurd and embarrassing amount of joy when she saw that he was still smiling as he continued to do his homework.

No, Ron wasn't what Hermione had always dreamed.

He was even better.


End file.
